"You can sleep up here." That is the last thing I can remember her saying to me in person. It had been a long night of drinking, but a fun one, full of faces that are all but blobs of goo now.
Making it back to the tiny dorm room had been a challenge. I don't quite remember what I had been drinking that night, but pictures tell me it was a lot of that cheap, watered down concoction known as Natural Light undoubtedly mixed with an assortment of finely distilled, top-shelf liquor from 7/11. My head-ache did not care what exactly I had consumed, it just cared that I had consumed it.
Nothing strikes my visual memory more than her smile. It was so contagious. Sometimes she would jut her jaw out, forcing somebody to admire it, and of course reciprocate.
The boat had finally stopped rocking when we made it back, but the laughter continued followed by some of the deepest philosophical insights four nineteen and twenty-year-old undergraduates can muster. I cannot relate a word that was said when we stepped through that heavy aluminum door-I am guessing it's made of aluminum-but what I can say is that it made us laugh, there was never a shortage of that when we were together.
The Kent State dorm rooms, off the top of my head, are probably 12 or 13X6 or 7 feet, glorified storage closets. There was enough room for two twin beds, stacked up bunk style no doubt; two small desks and their accompanying chairs; and some sort of various shelving units for the many nick-knacks that two college girls have with no shortage of pink shit mind you.
The girls made us sleep on the floor. Now, I was too drunk to care, give me a pillow and I will sleep on a bed of nails, but Josh, he was expressing some extreme disposition to the generous offer. We slept nonetheless.
Who knows, four, maybe five hours passed, the sun was up, and so was Josh trying to weasel his way into Whitney's bed which was the lower bunk.
"Move that ass over," Josh was shoving Whitney. He may have said "fat ass" or "big ass," I am not certain, but whatever it was she didn't like his tone, or possibly the fact that the 160+ lbs of him was trying to share the most uncomfortable size mattress that is possible to purchase in America. In all honestly it was probably a combination. Either way, she refused, so he stormed out with serious vigor.
The three of us found it amusing, it is easy to ruffle Josh's feathers and his reactions usually find a chuckle in somebody.
That's when she said it. That last thing I can remember. I climbed up top and snuggled right in. It may have been the fact that I was sleeping on a concrete floor, but I can remember the comfort, our warmth combining, and just knowing that this was my friend, and that she would be forever.
That is how things were for our lot. We grew up in a small town with each other. The better half of my memories are with those people plus a handful more. There is no shortage of nicknames or funny phrases that I can still recite; I can see and smell the campfire at our cleverly named "Sand Bar," behind Zach's house, riddled with half buried bottles of Seagrams V.O.
Our relationships are much different now. We rarely talk. When we do it feels as though nothing has changed, but it has. Perhaps it is the ever changing perspectives brought on by the sponge-like early twenties, the distance between us, or the additional friends we have made, but I know it started the day we found out she took her life.
There are natural phenomenons that can strike from seemingly nowhere. Tornadoes, tsunamis, earthquakes, but nothing can stun you like the power of words. My cousin attended the same college as the girls, so she found out very early on and called me.
The Facebook statuses were blossoming like briar bushes, flowerless, annoying briars.
I could feel the glue between me and each of my individual friends heat and begin to melt. I felt like she was responsible for constantly re-applying that glue so that it would never corrode, never soften. She made us all happy and it troubles me to think that we did not do the same.
I believe her discontent for this world was beyond any of our knowing however. There are times that the mind is weakened and tired by the task of living, and suicide is an irrevocable and disappointing relief from that task. I stopped asking myself about her decision, it is a futile question that only she can answer.
They found her body November 20th, 2009 in one of the dorm floors shower stalls. They say she hanged herself with a cell phone charger from the shower head. The way that this information directly made me feel I will not busy myself with describing.
Her funeral was puzzling. 200 people attended, maybe more, maybe less, it did not matter to me. It is a surreal feeling at a such a strange age such as 20 to say good-bye to someone you thought you would watch become even more beautiful, successful, and grow old. I had survived a round of cancer in my teens and I had an idea of what it was like to think about dying young, but I was not a witness then as I was at that moment.
I had cried already, but only at night in my bed where no one could see. It was important for me personally to show resilience, I had watched enough friends cry, they did not need to see me do the same. The funeral puffed away what little strength I had anyway. I struggled and struggled to choke on it, but nothing, no words, can express the weight that forced the sobs out of my chest.
She tries to speak to me still from time to time, but words need not be exchanged. I see her shining smile in my sleep, always at the foot of whatever bed I may be in.
Her smile says she loves me, and her eye's say she misses me.
I miss her too and I always will.
Jessie F. Schenk
(August 15, 1990-November 20, 2009)
-To my friends, I am sorry if the end is graphic, I made it quick and I hope you are not offended. If you are, then you are not my friend.
